


Ghost Light

by bookingit



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst! in the Mortuary, Big time angst, Gen, How Very Ominous, It's ok he's back now, Jim is worried, Opera houses by moonlight, Peter Jakes Didn't Leave Oxford, Peter Jakes is c o n f u s e d, Post-Episode: s02e04 Neverland, Undercover, always wanted to use that tag, but Morse did, lots of opera, no beta we die like men, opera - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookingit/pseuds/bookingit
Summary: A canon-divergent AU in which Morse gets out of prison, goes AWOL, and turns up in the most unexpected of places...
Relationships: Endeavour Morse & Jim Strange, Max DeBryn & Endeavour Morse, Max DeBryn & Peter Jakes, Peter Jakes & Endeavour Morse
Comments: 59
Kudos: 85





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Drusilla_951](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drusilla_951/gifts), [AstridContraMundum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/gifts).

> Hey, y'all! This is my first work in this fandom, and I'm super excited to see what you guys think. Let me know by leaving comments and kudos aplenty!

“D’you want me to—”

Max sighs. “Well, seeing as I’m bloody up to my elbows, Sergeant, I think you’d better.”

Irritated, he looks up from his work at Jakes, who scowls, making the few short strides into Debryn’s office in time to pick up the ringing phone.

Max directs his sight back down to the opened-up corpse on the table before him and threads a curved needle with surgical wire.

Jakes exits his office, shutting the door in his wake with a puzzled backwards glance.

“They…” Jakes straightens his (already perfectly straight, Max notes) cuffs as he walks slowly over to resume his place opposite Max.

“Well? Did they leave a message, Sergeant?”

“They hung up, soon as they heard my voice.”

Max snorts as he finishes the stitching moments later and cuts off the thread.

“Hmm. From your demeanour, I take it that you’re not often hung up on.”

Jakes bristles at the jab. “So, _Doctor_, what’s the prognosis with the victim?”

Turning to wash his hands, Max conceals a smirk. It’s always the detectives that are the easiest to rile…

Just as he opens his mouth to deliver a verbal report of his findings, the phone starts ringing again.

“No worries, I’ll get that now.”

The receiver is cool in his palm as he raises it to his ear.

“Debryn. May I help you?”

The line is silent for a moment but for someone’s breath coming through.

Curious, Max ventures again.

“Hello?”

A clearing of a throat from the other end, and he’s is almost ready to give it up.

And then a voice says, “Doctor Debryn?”

Max pauses. And then he stands up, shuts the door of his office, and collapses in his chair.

Because the voice on the other end… is _Morse_.

Morse, who he hasn’t seen in more than three months—_Morse_, who—who is waiting silently on the other end of the telephone for a response.

“I’ve just gotten out of prison,” says Morse, after a moment's awkward silence. “I’m… I’m standing outside…”

Here he trails off, almost as though he can’t believe it himself.

Max struggles to find something to say, keenly aware of the circumstances.

“That’s… Thank God, Morse.” Max damns himself for an idiot. Of all the things to say…

Something halfway between a laugh and a sob comes through the line.

“No, I’m _literally_ standing outside the prison… I was wondering… if you could come pick me up?”

Not two minutes later, Max is striding quickly from his office, coat already in his hands. He yells for one of his assistants to clock him out for a couple of hours.

“Doctor,” stammers an unusually ruffled Jakes. “Is everything alright?”

“Nothing to worry about,” bites out Debryn, halfway out the door. "I take it you can show yourself out.”

The morgue’s double doors swing shut behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which deep conversations are had, big decisons are revealed, and Jakes is confused (but what else is new?).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone! I was so grateful to see all the comments and kudos on the last chapter; it really means so much to be welcomed so kindly into this fandom. 
> 
> Can't wait to see what y'all think of this!  
Let me know by leaving comments and Kudos below!
> 
> Enjoy!

Max can’t say what he expected Morse would look like walking away from Farnleigh Prison and towards his car, but _this_…

His thoughts cut off as Morse opens the door of the Morris and climbs in.

The dark circles under his eyes tell Debryn that he hasn’t been sleeping; his hair has faded from red-gold to a faded-out brown, as though prison sapped the vitality straight out of it—out of _him_.

Morse turns the full force of his gaze toward him.

“Is he alive?” He sounds out of breath, and yet his voice is oddly forced, as though it toodk considerable effort to even get the words out.

“Who—”

The confusion must be evident on his face, because Morse’s look, his tone, become beseeching, desperate, even.

“Inspector Thursday, is he… Just…” his voice trails off, and the line of his throat moves as he swallows dryly. Not for a moment do his eyes leave Max’s.

“Surely…I mean, I know you hadn’t received the letters, but…”

Morse looks nearly ready to cry.

Debryn softens his voice. “Well, unless I spent my time at yesterday’s crime scene talking with a ghost, then yes. He’s very much alive, Morse. Still got a bullet in the lung, mind you. But…”

The man next to him slumps back in his seat, relaxing his shoulders for what Max can easily imagine to be the first time in nearly three months.

“Thank you,” he says, once he’s scrubbed his hands over his face. (If Max notices that they come away wet, he says nothing). Breathing deeply in through his nose, Morse gives his address.

As it turns out, Max drives _not_ to Morse’s flat but to the nearest grocery.

“I’m not letting you starve. Oh, how do I know you would? You look like you’re going to cloister yourself in that flat of yours for the next week straight. If I _can’t_ stop you from doing that, at least I can make sure you’ve got some food for your…Lord, I don’t know, confinement? Sequestration?”

Morse chuffs out a laugh at that, and Max is relieved to note a small smile at the corner of his lips.

“Who’s been paying my rent?”

“The lads at the station; I imagine they all chipped in.” Here, he pauses.

“Earlier, was I mistaken in believing that you called my office and then hung up?”

Morse confirms his role with a soft apology, his brow furrowing and his eyes turning down to his lap.

“Jakes was rather shaken about the whole thing; I don’t think he’s accustomed to being jilted like that.”

Rather than laugh, or even smile, Morse continues to inspect his hands where they lie folded in his lap.

It is a long moment later when he finally replies.

“I know, I just—the last time we spoke, he was—and earlier he just sounded… fine.” He looks quickly over at Max. “Just threw me for a loop, that’s all. It was like nothing had ever passed.”

He continues. “I don’t blame him, you know, for not coming to help us that night. He had his reasons, though they’re not mine to tell.”

Max glances over at him, then back to the road.

“What will you do now?”

Morse looks back out the window as they pull up alongside the red scooter parked by his building.

“I don’t know that I could go back there so easily, after all that.”

Max smiles and cuts off the engine. “I wouldn’t expect that anyone could.”

Morse swivels suddenly in his seat to catch Max’s eyes, the need to make him understand seeping into his voice.

“No, Doctor. I…don’t think that I could go back to policing.”

“Call me Max, Morse, really. You’d be sorely missed. _Have been _sorely missed. My frequent encounters with the police’ve had much less colour in them. But I don’t blame you one bit for wanting to leave coppering after what you’ve been through.”

He opens his door and climbs out.

“Now, shall we get you inside?”

The two men move the groceries inside in one trip. Max notes that someone must have come and cleaned out the refrigerator sometime in the past two and a half months. He suspects the landlady, perhaps a neighbour.

They get the various foodstuffs put away neatly.

Although Morse offers him a cup of tea, Max really must be getting back to work.

He reaches over to shake Morse’s hand.

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to phone. Should I say anything to your colleagues, if asked about you? Although, I don’t see why I would be…”

Morse grasps Max’s hand firmly before letting it go.

“I’ll leave that up to you. Thank you, Doctor Debryn. Truly.”

When Max turns around to leave, Morse is standing with his back to the door, inspecting the thick layer of dust that covers his record player.

Morse doesn’t phone Max…until he does, nearly a week later.

“I’m moving,” he explains to Debryn, who’s just shut a rather puzzled Sergeant Jakes outside his office door.

“I was wondering if you’d be able to help… Saturday, maybe?” Here, he takes a deep breath, as if to let out all his words at once.

Max cuts him off. “Saturday works for me…Morse, I know you probably don’t want to talk to anyone from the Cowley lot… but I _have_ just left Sergeant Jakes frowning in the other room…”

Morse’s tone is firm, resolute.

“Isn’t that fairly normal? I don’t owe them anything, Max, least of all an explanation. ‘Til Saturday.” He hangs up, leaving Max grinning ruefully and shaking his head.

Really, he’d thought that sows would take flight before Morse left Oxford… He supposes it’s time to launch them wholesale from trebuchets.

Peter, meanwhile, is wondering what could be taking the sawbones quite so long… really, it’s the second time within the week that Debryn’s just _left _him here with a sewn-up corpse while _he _chats away.

And it _is _chatting. He doesn’t see what else it could be; Peter’s watched Debryn take business calls before; this isn't one.

There is Debryn at work, with his cold, clipped syllables and his straight face, and then there is _this_. Damn him if the doc isn’t _smiling_.

Jakes shifts his weight impatiently from one leg to the other.

A word carries through the closed door.

“Morse--

Peter looks up in bewilderment as Debryn exits the office muttering something about catapults.

The doctor claps his hands before him and raises an eyebrow above his spectacles.

“Now, where were we?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter Jakes can't stand loose ends...so why does he keep on thinking about them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my friends! I am absolutely beaming to see the lovely feedback and commentary this has received.  
This chapter is slightly less plot-driven; I wanted to get inside Jakes' head, see what it's like in there...  
I'll let you be the judge of what you see...  
Just a fair warning, this is NOT my best chapter.  
Still I hope you enjoy!

The weeks after the sealing of the Bleinham Vale case pass in a rush for Peter, a rush of days, casework, visits to the morgue, drinks, girls, dances…

(Four weeks into this rush, he meets Hope; a month later he has lost her.)

"It’s nothing personal,” she says. “It’s really that I’m going to be going home soon, and I just… didn’t want to leave any loose ends behind.”

He smiles, squeezing her hand softly, telling her that he understands.

And he does. Understand loose ends, that is.

Later that night, as he quietly gets black-out-drunk on a mixture of latent shame and whiskey, he wonders about all the loose ends still trailing about in his life, wonders if he himself isn’t a loose end in someone else’s.

Maybe it’s like loose threads, where if you tug on it, the whole bloody problematic sweater unravels.

Or maybe you tug that string until whatever that loose end’s tied to, whatever it is you’ve _lost_…comes back to you.

Peter's mind strays to an empty shirt hanger in his closet back home...

He tore it off the hanging bar a couple months ago. (The clock had counted out three minutes between his taking it out and his stuffing it behind some extra sheets. Three minutes, two scratches on the hanger, and one new dent in the wall.)

But it's at this point in the night that his thoughts stop making sense…and so he stops remembering them.

He wakes the next morning, face-down on his living room floor.

If he were to check his billfold, he thinks there'd likely be less money than he’d started out the evening with. Peering groggily at the battered cardboard covers of the (unfamiliar) classical albums scattered on the floor around him, he supposes it couldn't be _too _much less money.

He calls in sick to work that day, claiming sickness. And he's not entirely lying, he thinks as he says it. His head's most definitely got _something _wrong with it...

Thursday’s voice is calm through the phone, telling him to take it easy and get some kip; he’ll be right as rain after a day’s rest.

Peter wishes it was all really that simple.

Unsure of what to do now, he lays back down on the floor with the records still around him and tries to fall back asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotional tension rises in the morgue; Max witnesses it breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all! Sorry it took me a while to post this chapter. I kept on sitting down to try and write, but nothing good ever came from it. Finally, this happened! 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think by leaving comments and Kudos below.   
I've been enjoying the wonderful feedback so far!

“—and _this _is where the blunt force trauma—are you even listening?”

Debryn’s angry tone cuts into Jakes’ tangle of thoughts and draws him out of it.

He shakes his head.

“You’ll have to repeat that one more time, Doctor.”

An angry snort from the pathologist across from him, but the explanation of the angle at which the victim had been clubbed in the head is given once more.

After the post-mortem is complete, the corpse sewn up (Jakes holds his breath through the whole procedure, just _waiting _for the phone to ring) and returned to its slide-out tray in the wall, Jakes stays for a moment.

Debryn isn’t sure what further knowledge the policeman will gain from turning in place and looking around the morgue, but turn the policeman does, little realizing that the pathologist watches him do so.

“Sergeant Jakes?...” Debryn’s voice, notes Peter, is softer, more _gentle_ than usual. The effect is oddly soothing, as though he _knows _what Peter’s about to say, what he’s about to ask. And perhaps he does. He keeps his back firmly toward the bespectacled doctor.

Debryn continues after a moment’s pause. “Is something the matter?”

The tone that comes out of the younger man’s mouth, when at last he speaks, is calm, nonchalant, and yet somehow predatory.

“Your phone didn’t ring today, Doctor.”

Max is unsure of where this might be going. If he could see Jakes’ _face_—

He clears his throat unsteadily. “Hmm. So it didn’t. Were you hoping it would?”

Peter, faced away from Debryn, keeps his eyes fixed on the wall’s green tiles and lowers his head slightly. His voice softens. (His resolve doesn’t)

“Somewhat…yes, actually.”

Debryn chuckles behind him “I had hoped that my company wasn’t _that _tedious.”

Peter’s posture straightens slightly; he shakes his head at the floor. What an interesting colour these tiles have, he notes absently, mulling over the other man’s tone.

A joke, he realizes angrily. He thinks that this is all a joke. The muscles of his neck tighten ever so slightly as he lifts his head and swallows.

He turns slowly, tensely around.

“And _I’d _hoped, this time, to _say something _to Morse instead of him just hanging up on me.”

His eyes snap up to meet Debryn’s, cold in their perpetual blueness, his tone accusing in its ferocity.

“How long have you two been in touch, Doctor? A month? Two? Did he reply to _your _letters in prison?” Jakes laughs, shortly and without a trace of mirth before continuing softly. “He didn’t to _mine_.”

And Max can’t think past the overwhelming pity he feels for this poor lad, whose sleepless nights spent thinking this matter over suddenly show on his face, in the raw hurt of his voice.

Sergeant Jakes is suddenly blurry in his vison as Max removes his glasses to clean them on a handkerchief.

When clarity returns, he clears his throat and regards the young policeman calmly, without a hint of the pity he feels within.

“No, I shouldn’t think he would’ve. He didn’t receive any letters, you see. Didn’t receive any news at all, actually.”

Jakes, meanwhile, forces his throat to steady his tone and let out only a few words at a time. God only knows, he thinks raggedly, what would come out otherwise.

“No news?”

Debryn leans forward onto the (freshly sterilized) tabletop.

“Sergeant, when he got into my car outside of Farnleigh prison, the first question he asked wasn’t ‘How are you, Doctor Debryn’, it was—"

Here, Jakes cuts him off angrily—

“’Course it wasn’t, he’d just got out of prison—”

—only to be cut short in turn by Max, who raises his voice and speaks above him.

“—_Jakes_, he didn’t even know if Thursday was _alive_.”

The morgue is silent; Jakes has stopped off in the middle of his accusation, mouth still open.

Max continues more softly.

“I’ve been telling him since he got out that he should at least let you lot know that he’s alright…”

Peter, who’s stepped back to collapse against a wall, inhales through his nose, exhales through his mouth.

God, but he needs a fag.

Debryn, seeing the restless way he digs his fingers into his slicked-down hair, walks over to his office, pours out a measure of whiskey.

Peter curls his fingers around the glass, taking a sip.

“Where…” He clears his throat, wipes at his nose with the back of his hand,

How oddly childlike he is in his efforts to rein in his tears, thinks Max.

Peter certainly _feels_ like a child. He feels like he did that night so many weeks ago, when Morse had _looked_ at him with those blue eyes, and… All it had taken was that, and he’d let it all out, the shame, the fears, the _memories_. All of it, laid out on the table like the whiskey glasses surrounding him, and his voice’d sounded _exactly_ like it does now. He looks down into his whiskey, takes another sip.

“Where is he?”

“He’s left Oxford. But I should think that you’ll be hearing from him rather soon.”

Peter nods once, twice. Swallows his whiskey and leans forward to put the glass on the edge of Debryn’s desk.

Running his fingers through his hair one more time (he tries not to notice the shaking, he really does), he straightens his jacket and heads back out into the morgue, hands in coat pockets.

Not looking up again, he nods a third time, murmurs his thanks to Debryn, and trudges out though the double doors, fingers fumbling to light the cigarette he soon holds between clenched teeth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all!   
So it feels like it took me forever to come up with this chapter, which is different from the others for two reasons:  
THE FIRST  
Now, usually I don't write with music on, (and I didn't, this time), but I CAN say that listening to music gave me the start of this chapter, and the rest came from there.   
If any of you are curious, the aria being sung is "Caro Nome", Gilda's aria from the opera Rigoletto.   
I myself prefer the 1961 Joan Sutherland version, but there may be one you find to be more pleasing to your ears. 
> 
> THE SECOND REASON  
You'll see...

_ Caro nome che il mio cor _

_ Festi primo palpitar… _

A voice flutters softly around the darkened room, settling gently on everyone within it, whether they be seated up in the rafters, down in the pit, in the box seats, or backstage. The stage crew have to remind themselves to keep prepping the set pieces for an upcoming scene rather than listen in; chorus members stand still as the harried costumers finish straightening the various caps, tights, cloaks, and masks that will, in mere moments, disguise their faces from the audience.

Everyone desires to watch the girl on stage, whose trills and staccatos waft out, butterflylike, to all edges of the place. 

And the audience listens as well. In particular, a lad of eleven who sits, awestruck, by his mother’s side, dressed in his finest clothing. Who knows nothing of what this woman is singing about, only that her voice has brushed against his heart.

There is a stirring from the wings of the stage as the chorus tiptoes exaggeratedly out, their voices a low bass to the woman’s high soprano.

She walks offstage, still singing, and a young Endeavour Morse listens to her go with rapt fascination.

_ E pur l’ultmo sospir… _

_ Caro nome tuo sarà. _

_ _

… Fifteen years later…

_ _

“ — I  _ have  _ been here before, I think.”

“What was that, Mr. Morse?”

The young man looks away from the stage to speak again to his guide, a wizened old man who has likely worked here since before the war.

“Oh, I was just saying that I saw something here with my mother, when I was a boy…maybe…”

Squinting up towards the room’s gilded ceiling as he thinks, he curls his fingers in his pockets, refusing to capitulate to the old instinct to tug nervously at his ear.

He finishes the sentence.

“…fifteen years ago?”

The red carpeting gives slightly beneath his shoes as he shifts his weight to the opposite leg. 

“A production of  _ Rigoletto,  _ I think…”

His voice trails off; his thoughts take over.

Meanwhile, the general manager of the opera house runs his eyes over the young man’s face with an exacting, yet not unkind gaze.

Eyes so old, he thinks, for one so young… He clears his throat, never removing his attention from the lad in front of him.

“I remember that one. Magnificent, wasn’t it?”

Meeting the man’s gaze once more, Morse nods slowly, emerging from his memories.

“Yes,” he smiles softly, sadly. “Yes, it was.”

Endeavour (and here, steps away from where his mother once sat beside him, he _is _Endeavour, if only for a moment) follows the older man out the auditorium door and into the lobby.

Minutes later, the two of them emerge onstage. 

The old man clears his throat, taking on a more businesslike tone as the copper-haired lad walks forward to stand at his side.

“Have you given more thought, Mr. Morse, to our offer of a key role in the upcoming production?”

The theatre is silent as the young man contemplates the question and the empty seats. 

Further downstage, the ghostlight winks.

“I have” he replies, his face impassive, unreadable. 

And then with a wry upward twist of his lips, he continues. 

“ _ Ho già risolto…verrò _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last couple lines are in Italian, and are from the opera Don Giovanni; they mean, "I have made up my mind; I will come."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter finds a ghost in an opera house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all!  
It's been a little while since I've last updated, but we're back now!
> 
> I've been planning this chapter for a good while now, and am excited to hear what you think of it.  
Let me know by leaving kudos and comments below!!!
> 
> Enjoy!

“They’re not expecting us,” says Thursday to his bagman. “Least we could do is let them finish whatever part they’re running through. “

Jakes snorts and leans against one of the theatre’s sculpted columns. “Right. Common courtesy, that.”

They’ve come to one of Oxford’s only opera houses on a case, surprisingly enough.

A he waits, Peter makes a study of the ceiling, counts the angels. Imagines shapes in the painted clouds.

The male singer finishes his part, some dramatic bit full of high notes he’s been on with for the better part of ten minutes; Jakes, relieved, stands up from his slouch, is about to walk toward the pit but is stayed by Thursday’s hand.

To his surprise, the older detective takes a seat, balances his hat on a knee.

He waves a hand toward the rows around them, indicating to Jakes to pick one.

Raising his brows, Peter takes a seat a couple chairs away as the woman on stage starts up her own bit, something slow, sweet, and hesitant.

Thursday seems to sense his (temporary?) bagman’s confusion and glances over to explain himself quietly.

“Rest those legs a moment, Sergeant. Like I said, we’ve got time… might as well stop over for a bit of music.”

Peter settles down into the velvet upholstery, crossing his arms and leaning back.

The sounds of the orchestra swell up from the pit, and soon enough, a girl’s voice, previously silent, rises with it.

He closes his eyes and listens, trying not to think of how much Morse would’ve enjoyed this case…

It sounds like a flower, thinks Peter, not knowing why, his brain filling with comparisons to petals that slowly open to the morning…

He glances over at his governor.

_He_, at least, must be able to make some sense of whatever they’re singing up there, knowing Italian, and all.

That makes one of them, then.

(All Peter can make sense of is that he…he doesn’t _dislike_ this music. He wouldn’t say that Morse was _on_ to something, but…)

The flower in his mind curls back up as the girl quiets down and the music fades to an end; the conductor waves his arms in a cutting-off motion from the pit, and Jakes rises as, next to him, Thursday starts to walk quickly to the front of the theater.

The rehearsal is paused for a few moments as he and Thursday ask the conductor a couple questions about the chorus director and his role in the productions.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary, and the man, once told he can carry on as before, tells them that they’re welcome to stay and watch a bit more of the rehearsal.

Curious, Jakes finds himself asking Inspector Thursday if they _do _have a bit more extra time as they exit into the lobby. Peter rubs the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish, but the older man nods his head, says that he’ll wait just here. And so, minutes after the door to the auditorium closes behind Jakes, the stage floods suddenly with singers of varying shape, size, and age, all singing different parts.

All is chaos as people haggle, shout, and sing; children clutch the aprons of women Peter supposes must be their mothers. The sounds of the crowd weave, join and part as a few low voices ring out clearly from separate areas of the revolving stage. The couple (and Peter’s fairly certain they _are _a couple, going by the way they were making eyes at each other, earlier on) disappear into the mass of actors and singers around them.

It seems for all the world like a crowded marketplace out of some old, blurry painting.

Yeah, thinks Peter. A marketplace, just… more _musical_.

From the other side of the revolving circle, some man’s exclamation, half-shout, half-song, catches Peter’s attention as it rings above the noise of the crowd; the turn of the stage brings the speaker into sight.

_—Chi vuol, donnine allegre, un po' d'amor?_

Peter snorts as a lean-figured bloke in a long black coat and a hat crouches down from his spot standing atop a table to chuck a giggling chorus girl beneath the chin.

The music quiets slightly, and the lad’s hat is removed and placed beside him, revealing a riot of copper curls beneath; the crowd’s jostling seems not to bother him, and he beckons his audience closer, continues on in a flirtatious tone.

_Facciamo insieme, facciamo a vendere e a comprar—_

A girl climbs up onto the table. He stands, throwing an arm about her waist, draws her closer to his side as he cries once more to the stage—

Peter squints suddenly in disbelief

Because he blinks and it looks like Morse, _Morse _shouting gleefully to the noisy crowds before bending to kiss her—

The stage, revolving, carries the whole lot of them, Morse, his long coat, and his crowd of female admirers, suddenly out of sight.

Jakes curses internally.

He searches anxiously about the crowd again, but it’s no use; by the time the stage has completed another turn, the table and its occupants have gone.

Peter, rattled, confused, and just a bit uneasy, cranes his neck, searching the crowd again for— 

A tug on his jacket from the direction of the door tells Peter that Thursday is growing impatient.

With one more glance towards the stage, he turns away and follows his governor out of the theater. 

As he walks out into the sunlight, a cloud covers the sun. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thoughts?  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xCblCDUgo  
Here ^^ is the link to (my favourite) recording of the beginning of the marketplace scene from La Boheme!  
Morse's bit starts up at just after 1:00 minutes in.  
For those of you curious about just what it was Morse was saying to those giggling lasses, here's a rough guide to the Italian.  
—Chi vuol, donnine allegre, un po' d'amor?:  
Which of you happy ladies wants love?  
Facciamo insieme, facciamo a vendere e a comprar—  
Let's make a bargain, a bargain of selling and buying-- 
> 
> And then the next line that he shouts, roughly translates to  
"For a penny, I'll sell my virgin heart"  
so.... yeah.  
;)  
Had Jakes stayed a little longer, it's my theory that he would have seen Morse re-emerging from the crowd, tousle-headed (or more so, at any rate) and re-doing the buttons on his shirt. 
> 
> Make of that what you will...  
But whatever you make of it, let me know!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim has an argument, and Jakes has a cigarette. (He'll need it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all!   
I'm sorry that it's been so long since the last chapter was put up.   
But I took a vacation! (A Real Life vacation!)  
Seeing as I'm back home now, and I've still got a little while before the rat race starts back up, I should be able do some more writing. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit shorter than the rest, though I hope it's no less enjoyable. 
> 
> Let me know by leaving comments and kudos.   
Enjoy!

The purr of the engine cuts off as Strange pulls the keys from the ignition.

Jakes takes a drag from his cigarette, gazing silently through the windshield at the cool of the moonlight on the opera house’s grey stone.

He shivers, suddenly glad as the massive chandeliers, previously unseen in the building’s large windows, begin to glow softly from the darkness. 

Leather creaks as Strange shifts in the driver’s seat. He clears his throat.

Jakes turns his head to the side, sensing a question in the other man’s movement.

“You say something, Strange?”

“Yeah, Sarge. Why’re we here, again?”

Jakes stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray.

“Bird who works here called for help. Says she was helping clean up after a show and someone turned the lights out on her, made some threats.” He opens the car door, continuing once Strange has climbed out of the car and locked it. 

“Pushed her down or something, too; she says she hit her head and blacked out.”

Strange nods and swallows heavily.

“Listen, Sarge…”

Jakes turns around, half annoyed already. Well, half annoyed at Strange, half annoyed at himself for being so nervous to step back into the opera house after being here only a couple days ago.

“What.”

“Before we go in there…It’s just…well, the other week, Ms. Frazil was—”

“I can’t see what Ms. Frazil’s got to do with this case—”

Strange finishes in a rush.

“It’s not the case; it’s the opera house. Ms. Frazil asked me if I’d heard anything from Morse lately. He’s been hanging ‘round the place a bit.”

Jakes turns around to face Strange, and Jim can’t help but think that the other man looks even harsher with the moon lighting up his face’s sharp angles like some statue.

The sergeant’s tone is angry.

“Yeah, maybe he has. But why should we care that he’s been hanging ‘round here? It’s been months since we’ve seen him. _Months_.”

He scoffs, turning back around and starting to walk again.

“Bloody bastard hasn’t even put his papers in.”

Strange keeps pace at Jakes’ side.

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, way I see it, he made his choice when he got out of prison and didn’t even tell us, yeah? We’ve had _nothing _from him. Nothing. No visits, no letters, no calls. If he hasn’t tried to say anything by now, it’s because he doesn’t want to.”

Strange senses the end of the discussion.

In his mind, though, he answers Jakes, takes him by the lapels and shouts _no, _listen_ to me. _

‘We’ve had nothing from him’, Jakes had said.

_It’s only fair_, thinks Jim. _All those months, _he_ had nothing from _us_. _

The silence between them is heavy as they round the corner near the front entrance, outside of which is parked another police Jag.

“How’d Thursday get here?” says Strange, resuming guiltily his best expression of impassivity.

“PC Nelson,” the sergeant replies, seeing the car. “Drove him here ‘cause he was closer.”

Jakes stops before they reach the carved double doors.

“Listen.” He smooths back his hair. “No more of this Morse business around the old man, yeah? We’ve got work to do.”

Strange nods, and they enter the opera house.

Clocks across Oxford strike ten. Bells echo off the cold stone of the libraries, museums, churches, colleges... 

Inside the opera house, Inspector Thursday talks with the general manager as he waits.

“—were here the other day to talk with the conductor—Oh, there you are, Jakes. “

He gestures the young sergeant forward to meet the older man.

“Mr. Crakehall, this is Detective Sergeant Jakes, my bagman.”

Crakehall gives Peter a thin smile, then motions further into the building.

“Now, gentlemen, if you’ll follow me…” 

They enter a small door set behind a curtain on the wall. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What passes for calm before a storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....  
Here I am... three months late... They say that punctuality is the politeness of princes(ses)...  
Huh. Maybe that explains why I'm such a damn peasant.  
But I'm back, and that's what matters!  
I hope that this small chapter tides you all over for now. The next part is already in the works, and promises to be much longer.
> 
> Let me know what you think by leaving kudos and comments for me at the end! Seriously! That stuff is my food.  
Enjoy!

It’s Wednesday morning, eight o’clock. A clock strikes the hour somewhere nearby as last-minute passengers rush to make the bus, pulling out their fares from wallets, pockets, hats.

One stooped old gentleman leans in to produce a coin, seemingly by magic, from behind the conductress’ ear. She smiles indulgently as his grandchildren giggle with delight.

They board, and she turns to the next waiting person.

“And you?”

The man fumbles for a moment in the inner pocket of his coat, searching for the telltale shape of a coin.

“One moment—ah—.” Produced from the pocket, the coin’s dropped into the conductress’ waiting palm.

“Here’s your ticket, love. Have a nice morning.”

He brushes toward the middle of the bus, murmuring a soft, apologetic ‘excuse me’ to a woman who moves out of his way. His mind whirs as it catalogues the city outside the bus window, turning in an attempt to keep itself busy.

It’s just after eight. He’s a bit early, as usual. Didn’t have time for food before leaving… But, he muses, when does he ever? Never, that’s when. He’ll have to get around to changing that one of these days. Maybe he’ll get up earlier…

Eight fifteen, and the big wooden door of the opera house swings open to let him in.

He smiles at the doorman, makes his way casually to the stage door.

Another morning, he thinks, same as any other so far.

He’d woken up in a cold sweat earlier, the _clang_-_clang-clang_ of a nightstick run over a catwalk railing still echoing in his ears.

It takes him a moment, some times in the middle of the night, to reassure himself of where he is, to convince himself of a few things.

That the shadow of the gate outside doesn’t remind him so much of the shadow of a grilled prison window.

That the night terrors are meaningless, nothing that a warm shower and a record can’t put out of his mind for a little while.

That he doesn’t want a glass of whiskey so much his hands nearly shake. 

Of course, all of this is out of his mind come morning. He knows that he can make it through the night, if only he waits for the sunrise.

He's had a lot of practice with it, after all.

Waiting, that is. For the morning.

Small mercies, he thinks, and slips though the stage door and down the hall to start his day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nu?  
What did y'all think?  
Sorry again to all of you wonderful people for being so late and so short with this.  
Anyway, I love you all. Stay safe!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get an introduction into Morse's new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone.  
Guess who's back...  
It's me, more tired than ever.  
A shit-ton of Life Developments have happened since my last chapter, not to mention more than a couple months.  
I hope you all enjoy this! It was written in a hurry, so I'm sorry for any mistakes. 
> 
> As always, leave comments and kudos to feed my wretched little soul.

_Liberame, Domine,de morte aeterna…_

He almost can’t help it, the words that slip from between his lips. He finds himself humming, more often than not, whenever he’s alone.

_In die illa tremenda… In die illa…_

His hands are steady as he opens the door to the dressing room that’s been assigned him, and the knob turns easily beneath his palm.

The words trail off into a loud exhale as he flicks the light on and props the door open.

It won’t do to have the wrong music in his head for the day. Not in this line of work, anyway.

A door thuds further along the hallway; someone muffles a curse.

The room’s sole chair becomes the hanging-place for his coat as he settles onto its worn seat. The small sofa he leaves empty in anticipation of the morning’s impending arrivals.

The minutes, ticking slowly past, pass to the tempo of a clicking pen, punctuated every now and then by bouts of silence as Morse makes notes on the music sheets in front of him, until it is ended by two pairs of feet shuffling blearily in through the doorway as their owners make a beeline for their accustomed places on the sofa.

Morse re-orders the pages and sets them aside, waiting, as he usually does for one of them to signal somehow that they are alert enough to start the day.

“I hate how focused you are in the mornings. Why,” an almighty yawn splits the air, “can’t you just stumble in all rumpled like the rest of us…”

There it is.

The chair swivels slowly around to face the guests, the pen goes behind an ear.

“I’ve found it better to do my stumbling a bit earlier than you do—And to confine it to the house, too.”

His new…friends, he guesses. He’s not really sure what to call this strange coexistence characterized by a motley bunch of assorted cast and crew members that start out their day in his dressing room until they wake up enough to start their jobs.

Dora, a girl from the chorus, peers at him misanthropically, as is her morning custom.

He doesn’t take it personally; it tends to wear off around half-past eight.

“That’s—” The couch’s _other _tenant yawns loudly. “’Scuse me. That’s good advice, Morse. Maybe we should get up earlier, hmm Teddy? I haven’t ever seen you up and awake more than ten minutes before we’re due to catch the bus.”

Morse snorts.

The second couch sitter leans upright at the end furthest from Morse, busy being used as a pillow by his friend. James—Jamie to friends—is unfailingly good natured, with a lazy air that hides the steel-trap mind behind his brown eyes. He and Dora are flatmates.—But not _together_, of course—they’d been quick to tell Morse.

“She’s not my type,” Jamie had deadpanned. “At all.”

“S’okay though. He’s not my type either.”

The two of them bantered good-naturedly back and forth as Morse, surprised to find himself included in this little group, had sat on his side of the picnic table and sipped at the tea they’d given him as a nice-to-meet-you overture.

“Mmm, yes, but then neither are _you_, Morse. Her type, I mean. She’s no danger to your virtue. _Me _on the other hand…That’s debatable.” He’d wiggled his eyebrows. “You’re not _quite_ my type, but a fair bit closer than she is, I’d say.”

Endeavour let an eyebrow climb up, hoping that a one-word answer would conceal his complete confusion as to what he was supposed to do with...the whole situation in general, really. 

“Type?”

“Type.” Jamie nodded sagely. “I’d say… six feet, dark haired, built like a brick shithouse...Need I go on?”

A moment's silence. And then, 

"No."

“Aww, Jamie, he’s _blushing—_” She turned in her seat, elbowing Jamie in delight. "I like him." 

“Look out, Morse—"

She slid suddenly onto Morse’s side of the bench, pressing up against his side, drawing his arm through her own. 

Ice made its way through his veins, and he froze to match it.

Jamie started speaking, but Morse heard nothing.

“--she’s incredibly tactile. Just you wait till we’re working late nights on this show. She’s even worse, then—are you alright?”

No answer. 

"...Morse?"

“I…” 

He hadn't really had much physical contact--of the friendly sort, at least, since Farnleigh opened its mouth and swallowed him whole. Hadn't even been sure he'd be able to do anything like that again, once he got out. 

But this... this felt like a start. A bit of warmth, even though he was mostly cold. 

“It’s… fine.” He found that the tension in his body eased more with every breath taken, and he closed his eyes till it was gone. The silence at the table, meanwhile, sat poised, waiting for him to say something. He took a sip of his tea to fill it, instead. “Just…not used to this sort of thing, is all.”

The three of them sat silently, looking back and forth to each other before Jamie broke cautiously in.

“I hope we haven’t scared you off.”

Morse shook his head, trying to convey the message of _–I’m not offended, just a bit awkward_—with a sheepish shrug and what he hopes is a good enough smile. “Not at all.”

Which brings them to the present day. A month later, and the pair of mischief makers never fail to arrive in his dressing room fifteen minutes before the daily announcement meeting.

“Either of you hear what happened here on Saturday night?” Dora seems to be waking up.

“No," says Morse, absently running his thumbnail along one of his eyebrows as he looks over his papers once more. "Anything good?”

Jamie leans his head off the back of the couch to look at her.

She stretches, reaching up to the low ceiling with a groan.

“Well, seems like there was a bit of a break-in around closing time—”  
Her flatmate cuts in. “Really?"

“—and I heard they gave Olive—you know Olive, down in costuming—a bit of a knock-around, the poor thing."

"Poor girl... Have the police been around yet?"

"Dunno. I expect someone'll be down from Management to tell us the news, though." 

The clock strikes half-past eight, and they all gather their things to walk down the hallway to the main stage. 

"What do you think of it, Morse?" Dora, slightly shorter than the two men she calls her friends, wedges herself in between them, gazing inquisitively up in expectation of an answer.

He strolls along quietly for a moment, hands shoved deep into his pockets, before turning his face to reply darkly. 

"I don't have enough to go on yet, to make much out of it, but if I'm right..." 

Jamie glances interestedly to his left, watching keenly over Dora's head. "Go on."

Morse keeps his eyes ahead, his hands clenched and out of site. 

"The police'll be here today." 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other shoe, dangling as it has been all this time, finally drops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter!!  
I was overjoyed by the comments on the last one, because they let me know that you're still reading this.  
I hope that this chapter feeds your souls a bit.
> 
> Comment to give validation to the rat controlling my body by tugging on my hair.

He’s tired. He needs tea.

But complaining won’t do him any good.

Only a part of the job, questioning. Even if it is early. Even if he does have to interview fifty-odd people today, and can’t even get started yet because Thursday’s still with the house management, trying to find a way to question people “without disturbing the flow of rehearsal”, whatever that means.

Jim chances a look at Jakes, next to him.

And then has to stop his eyebrow from raising. The other man’s on edge, no two ways about it.

Barking out orders all morning, scanning the people around them like he’s looking for someone to rip a new one.

Doesn’t seem to have found them yet, whoever they are.

Their argument in the car the other night still hasn’t left either of their minds yet; it won’t be too long before the tension starts to affect their work relationship.

And if there’s anything that kills upward motion through the ranks, it’s grudges.

Jim clears his throat. Best to make peace and have done with it.

“Look, the other night—”

“Don’t mention it.” Jakes’ tone is a far cry from his usual smirking drawl. “S’over. Nothing more to be said.”

He glances over at Jim, and Jim nods.

“Right… Good, then.”

Jakes goes back to looking down the hallway they’re waiting in. His eyes never land on any one person for more than a moment before moving restlessly on.

Maybe he should light a cigarette, thinks Jim. He seems like it might do him some good.

\---

_God, _he could do with a cigarette or four right about now.

Of course there’s no smoking allowed. Trust the universe to conspire against him this early in the morning.

He’s known that they’d have to come back here _again_, but knowing it and actually having to bloody do it are two very different things.

At this point, he’s just glad that he’d picked yesterday as the designated hangover morning, having gone out Saturday night after dropping the guvnor back home from the opera house.

He couldn’t help it, really, he couldn’t. He’d gone home that night fully intending to sleep off the whole stupid business.

Hadn’t even taken off his tie when the incessant itch under his collar drove him back out to the pub down the road, and, he had hoped, into the bed of some college bird.

But the girls at the pub…

He’s having a hard time explaining it, even to himself.

They’d all just _grated_ on him somehow. The soft touches, the sideways glancing, the way they’ll eye him up and wait for him to come over to them with a line, to light a cigarette, to ask for a number.

It’s all about the steps, with them.

Normally he likes it, the sidestepping and the chase, the will-she-won’t-she, what-happens-next of it all. Being looked at and being wanted.

But that night, he—

He simply _needed_.

The night air settled around him as he let the pub door shut him back out onto the street.

And just for a night, he wanted someone who might need him too.

Before he knew it, his feet had pointed him further into town, down a path he’d forgotten they even knew how to follow.

Past the closed-up shops, past the basement nightclubs with their deafening music and girls in short dresses eyeing him up from the sidewalk outside.

Bridges, alleys, shortcuts known only to a certain sort kept him off of the main roads and mostly out of sight as his destination grew closer.

He’d been careful to memorize the route, there at the beginning of his time in Oxford.

Around the time of the transfer, he’d convinced himself it was the desire to map out his new city which had driven him to seek the club out. He knows now that it was the need to know that he’d not be alone in it, that others like him still searched the night for something _more_.

He’d come back to it maybe three times in all before stopping.

At first, it was the fear that the squad assigned to break the joint up would consist of familiar faces from the pub, from the office. They’d mock him, toss him in a cell. Maybe beat him up.

Then would come the court trial and the sentencing.

Prison, maybe. Or chemical castration.

There’d been a flicker of hope in him when they’d legalized it; he’d stayed away anyway.

It’d been easy to think himself content with the pubs.

He had the option to go back to that, he knew as he crossed the road to avoid a clump of rowdy college students.

He could. But he didn’t want to.

Rounding a corner, he stepped up to a back-alley door and breathed, his mind made up.

Three sharp raps on the door, a pause. Then eight more. 

Three to get the doorman’s attention. Eight for the words in some line out of a poem, a man inside had told him the first time, smiling like he was supposed to be in on some joke.

Something about killing the things you love.

Bloody academics.

The lad he’d gone home with at the night’s end had had eyes the color of storm clouds, delicate hands, and a smile that was gone before you even realized it had been there

Peter tries to remember his name now, and finds he can’t.

Wishing once more for a cigarette, if only to pass the time, he tells himself that it’s better that way.

\---

“_I _bet it was an inside job—”

“Who here’d want to do anything to Olive? You’ve been reading too many detective novels again—”

Morse tries to keep his mind from racing, but it feels like he can’t stop it. The threads of the case are almost right in front of him. It would be so _easy_ to grasp one and pull on it, to start unraveling the details…

An inside job would mean that--

“What do you think of it all, Morse? Weren’t you a copper for a bit?”

Four curious faces turn to him.

The young man responsible for _that _comment gets an elbow in the side from a girl next to him.

“Y’shouldn’t assume that just because he was one of ‘em means he was Sherlock bloody Holmes, Tommy. He’s not a performing monkey.”

Morse smiles.

This and that, he’d told them, when they’d inevitably asked about his past work. Signal Corps. He _had_ mentioned the police, though; he’d had to. Policing in Oxford brings you to all sorts of places; the chance that someone who works here might have seen him on a case was higher than he’d liked to game with.

“Yes, I was. Only for a bit, though. Not too long.”

They probably think that he’d dropped the job after a few months on the beat.

Another person might have tried to cover the whole thing up, but…falsehood isn’t in his nature.

He turns to answer the question.

“Not much to think about, really, is there?”

He gives the group a small smile.

“I mean, we won’t know anything until the police are done.”

He _knows_ they want him to join in the gossip. But he’s never been that type. He listens and nods along, instead.

He tries to be less prickly, here, and finds it easier than while on the force.

Still, he wouldn’t exactly call himself outgoing.

He’s come here to start a new life, not to play the part of someone he isn’t.

Except for when it’s his job.

He corrects himself. Playing a part _onstage_ is nice. He gets to be someone else for a while. Doing the same offstage, he suspects, would just get exhausting.

\---

Peter leans back against the wall and crosses his arms.

Where’s Morse in all this?

In the catacombs, or a dressing room, maybe…

He could be _anywhere_.

He stifles a laugh at the thought of Morse hiding up in the rafters to get out of being questioned.

Strange glances over curiously, and Peter waves him off, faking a cough into his arm.

He’s fooling himself; he knows damn well that they’ve assembled the entire cast of singers in the room behind him.

The wall at his back seems as solid as a castle, yet as flimsy as smoke from a cigarette.

In all likelihood, Morse is just on the other side of it.

\---

“Scuse me, folks. I’ve just got to borrow him for a minute.”

Dora, steering him away from the conversation by the elbow, has found him at last.

“Looked like you could do with some rescuing,” she explains, elbowing past a few familiar faces with a friendly nod. “That lot’ll talk forever, and who even _knows _how long we’ll be here.”

Jamie waves to the pair of them from the other side of the shifting crowd.

“Thank god you’re back,” he sighs melodramatically as they near him. “Don’t want to have to wait for my interrogation all alone.” He grins. “What d’you think they’ll do to us, to get us to talk?” He jerks his head toward a constable standing by the doorway.

Morse and Dora reply at the same time.

“Ask questions.”

“Thumbscrews”.

The bark of laughter this elicits turns a few heads in their direction, and Morse wants to hide. The police are here; the last thing he wants is their attention on him. He briefly entertains the notion of finding a spot up in the highest catwalks and staying there.

His fingers itch for something to do; his mind turns over a hundred different possibilities for today’s trajectory.

He could be recognized now, he could be recognized _during _questioning, or maybe he’ll get lucky and _won’t_ be noticed—

Thinking it over like this will do nothing but make him nervous. And the ones that seem tense during questioning, he knows from experience, are the ones they’ll pay attention to.

He needs a distraction—for himself, not for the policeman on the door—making a run for it would just doom him further.

“Wouldn’t mind actually being allowed to _do_ something… There’s no telling how long we’ll be waiting.”

“Hm. Me neither.” Dora, next to him, shifts her weight from one leg to the other, brushes a short, dark ringlet off of her face. “We could warm up, but it might be all for nothing since they could just keep us _standing_ here…”

She pauses, face a temporary picture of consideration.

“Unless…” She's slipped into silent thought; the gears inside her head are practically visible as they whir.

He turns to Jamie for an explanation.

“One of her mad ideas. Everyone’s getting impatient–so _she’s_ decided to seize on it somehow…But I try not to get involved if I can help it.”

Morse generally doesn’t like schemes, mad or otherwise.

Unfortunately, this has never stopped him from getting caught up in them.

\---

The whistling, when she starts it, pierces the din about them. 

It’s a vaguely recognizable tune.

She looks around sharply and keeps up the sound. Two basses, he notices, from a neighbouring group have started singing quietly along, smiles on their faces.

It’s not discernable yet to anyone outside the room, the singing. Under all the conversations going on around them, it probably just sounds like more noise. A distant beehive, maybe.

Jamie raises an eyebrow in recognition.  
“We’re doing _that _one, are we?” But he joins in, nonetheless.

Morse looks around, too scared to ask why exactly a quarter of the singers in the room have quietly started in on the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from _Nabucco _and are grinning like idiots as they do it.

The constable by the door seems half a minute away from double checking his handbook to make sure the protocol for this sort of thing isn’t covered. (Morse could tell him that it isn’t.)

The crowd shifts back and forth

He makes sudden eye contact across the room with Adeline, one of the other principal singers in the house’s current production. She shrugs, then smiles. Gestures to the office across the hall where their general manager speaks to the officer in charge. 

_We're waiting on them. Least we could do is make a bit of trouble to hurry them up._

Dora’s left off the whistling and started to sing as well, swaying ever so lightly, an air of impish satisfaction about her as she listens to what she’s wrought.

Morse takes it all in. The tunefulness of the whole thing, the oneness of mind and intention, this way of saying “hurry up, please,” in the way only performing artists can.

He's never liked plots, always seems to end up on the wrong side of them. 

But this is an _innocent _plot. No cover-ups, no past monsters come back to knock on the door...

A grin splits his face.

He joins in.

\---

“D’you hear that?”

It feels a bit risky asking Jakes _anything_ when he’s in a mood like this.

Sure enough, he scowls.

“Ought to get your ears checked—”

He pauses.

“Huh.”

The humming’s taken on a tune, now, like a beehive’s somehow learned to read music.

A few strides down the hall bring the lanky detective sergeant to the entryway, where he momentarily steps out of sight and into the doorway.

Nothing to get rid of your blues like sudden confusion, thinks Jim.

Or maybe it’s the music, and Morse really was onto something.

**\---**

They’re bloody singing.

_Singing_. During a police investigation.

Unbelievable.

Is this some strange way to show impatience? An intimidation tactic?

If it is, it won’t work on him.

The constable on the inside of the door glances over his (singing) charges and turns to Jakes, the panic growing in his eyes ever more evident.

“What should I—”

He’s hauled bodily out of the doorway by the shoulder and is told to switch places with Strange.

Strange, meanwhile, wonders how he’s always the one put into these messes.

Opera houses, singing…

It’s wishful thinking, he knows, but he almost thinks he sees Morse out of the corner of his eye.

If only. He laughs quietly, and it is lost in the noise of the room.

\---

It seems that the group’s efforts are fruitful, not that Morse can tell it at first, as he fails to see Strange stepping in to replace his colleague by the door.

The song winds down, though, and he watches the crowd shift around him as a new arrival strides quickly into the entryway, nudging a constable that might be Strange and whispering something in his ear.

He’s followed closely by Mr. Crakehall, the general manager who’d offered him his part in the first place.

Inspector Thursday makes their number four.

He really ought to have skipped work today, he thinks.

Jakes’ eyes cut around the room, flitting from face to face.

This image of the razor-sharp sergeant stands in stark contrast to the figure Jakes was the last time they’d met; that man was a wreck, and rightly so. Morse didn’t blame him, still doesn’t.

But this man seems to be the same as he has ever been. His suit is unrumpled, his eyes are sharp.

That other Jakes he caught a glimpse of might have never been.

Somehow, Morse thinks, that’s how he’ll want to be treated. And he’ll treat Morse the same as he always has. With disdain.

Morse finds that he can no longer muster up the pettiness to return it. He slumps a little bit, turns around casually, as if he’s only looking for someone.

Dora must notice the tension in his arm, seeing as how she’s suddenly clinging to it on one side and Jamie’s on the other.

She frowns up, and he shakes his head.

“Seen a few ghosts,” he murmurs quietly down to her.

She nods. “You haven’t done anything wrong, though, have you?”

It almost takes him a moment to realize that it’s a rhetorical question and not an accusation.

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

But doesn't he have something to worry about? Some judgement to look forward to?

He _left_, after all. For an organization that prizes loyalty so highly, doubts that the policemen at the front of the room will see it that way. 

He hears Crakehall call for attention from the entryway, and turns slowly around as the older man explains the situation and the questioning process.

Half the assembled group will go with Police Constable Strange, the other half with Detective Sergeant Jakes.

The room splits down the middle at these words, and Morse jostles along with the rest to stay with his friends.

It doesn’t make a difference whose half of the room he’s in, who asks him the questions he’s been anticipating since he got out of prison.

Jail was where doing the right thing for the police had landed him. He hopes that _they_ can do the right thing as well, and leave him alone.

They owe him that much, at least, in the same way that they're owed nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who thinks that a bunch of people singing like this is unrealistic has clearly never been in a room of high schoolers when someone starts singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
> 
> I'm really interested to know what you guys thought of Jakes' POV.   
Lemme know in the comments.
> 
> Next chapter:  
The shit hits the fan part 2, ft. Jim Strange


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HI!!!!  
I'M SO EXCITED FOR YOUGUYS TO READ THIS!!! I AGONIZED OVER IT FOR WEEKS.  
This is what so many of you have been waiting for. This is what I'VE been waiting for!  
This is what our boys have been waiting for!!!!!!!  
Don't forget to leave me a comment below so I know what you thought of it.  
Enjoy!  
Without further ado, I give you...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Shit Hits the Fan, part 2.  
(ft. Jim Strange)

The tedium of the questioning process begins, starting up like the awakening of an old machine. Grindingly slow at first, it soon picks up some steam.

He’s familiar with its song, set to the rhythm of one door swinging open, another shut, of one person entering an office as another leaves.

Morse lets his eyes follow them, imagining the dialogue within.

Or the police side of it, anyway.

Name?

Address?

Occupation?

And where were you, Mister/Miss [_last name_] on [_whenever the crime took place_]?

Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?

Thank you, please send the next person in.

And then on to the next. The song starts itself over in another variation of answers.

The two queues stretch on ahead of him, dozens strong.

Interviewing a crowd of irritated singers won’t be pleasant for either of the two policemen inside of those offices. That much, at least, is plain.

He snorts. 

The lines move forward.

\---

Meanwhile, in one of the two offices, a policeman readies himself to settle in for a while.

Interviews.

_Lovely_, really. Let’s spend the morning sitting flat on our arses, asking the same five questions over and over again, why don’t we?

But it can’t be helped; better to get through it than to complain.

He leans forward toward his notepad, pulls a spare pencil out of his pocket.

“Name?”

\---

In the next room over, a colleague does the same.

Pencils laid out and sharpened, notebook at the ready, he looks up at the first person of the day.

“Name?”

“Charles Seaton.”

“Address?”

“Flat 12, 145 Highmore Street.”

“And your occupation?”

“Chorus member, tenor.”

The young officer hesitates, pencil hovering above the page.

Is ‘tenor’ an occupation?

Better write it down to be safe.

“Where were you Saturday evening at nine o’clock?”

\---

—Now back to the first room.

“Occupation?”

“Chorus member. Tenor.”

He hesitates…

And simply writes ‘Chorus member’ before moving on to get the man’s address.

The seconds tick by.

“Where were you Saturday night at around nine o’clock?”

“Home.”

“Is there anyone who can confirm this?”

\---

“Name?”

“William Righton.”

\---

“Name?”

“Judith Costa.”

\---

Same questions over and again, a haze of “Address?” and names, alibis and pencil markings.

Time slips past.

For Morse, in line outside, he wishes that it would slow down.

The chatter around him dulls to a hum; he thinks of being faced with the inevitable.

\---

Ninety minutes after questioning started.

One of the two rooms.

One of the two policemen sits at the desk, praying for a break in the monotony. He’s due one any minute now…

“Name?”

“Theodora Hirschmann”

Right. H-I-R…?

Jesus, he’s tired.

She spells it out loud for him, waits until he writes it out before saying, “Address is Flat A, 224 Cardigan Street.”

“Occupation?”

“Chorus member.”

The pencil scratches across the page.

“And where were you, Miss Hirschmann, Saturday evening at around nine?”

“At home.”

“Anyone to vouch for you?”

“My flatmate—he’ll be next up in the queue by now.”

He writes it all on the lines of his notebook before looking up with a small smile.

“Right. Thank you, miss. Please send him in.”

She gets up, hesitates by her chair.

“Oh, sorry, I meant he’s…”

But she pauses. Whatever Theodora Hirschmann, Chorus Member, was going to say about her flatmate, she seems to think better of it, and leaves.

_God_, thinks the police officer, brain half-dead. Where’s some tea when you need it?

\---

Simultaneously, next door.

“Anyone to vouch for you?”

“Flatmate. She’s in the other line, works here too.”

“Right.”

The officer pauses in his writing, lets the façade of ‘business as usual’ slip for a moment.

“How many after you. In the queue.”

“One.”

Thank _God_.

“You’re finished. Send them in.”

James Pelton, Chorus Member, exits the office.

\---

Morse checks his wristwatch before glancing up at the door in front of him.

The two lines have dwindled down to… him and one other person.

He’ll be called in now. Any minute.

Someone leaves one of the rooms. Dora.

“You’re up,” she says, smiling as she walks past him to freedom.

Right.

He nods to the last person from the other line and steps forward.

\---

New page, get ready to start writing.

Last one, and then he’s finished; Thursday’ll let them take a break.

He doesn’t bother looking up as the door swings open to admit a man.

“Name?”

Silence.

He asks again, more statement that question.

Nothing.

Whoever this is had better be _deaf_.

“Your _name_, matey.”

He looks up, finding—

A _smile_, as the person (_not deaf_) replies easily, “I’d have thought you knew it.”

_Oh._

Blue eyes, crinkling around the corners in honest-to-God amusement, hair reddish and just this side of wild…

“Er…address?”

Morse laughs, says something about police procedural going on as usual.

He ducks his head, jots down the address that’s rattled off carefully by the man in front of him.

How many times has he pictured this sort of thing, what he’d say, how he’d react?

And in _none _of them had it been like _this_.

Not that _this_ is bad. If there’s any place he should have expected it to happen…

“You’re looking well,” says Morse (_Morse!_), uncrossing his arms and sticking a hand into one of his pockets.

Having finished with the transcribing, Jim lays down the pencil and gives his friend a look-over. Then, softly, he ventures, “How’ve _you_ been? We didn’t hear from you after…”

A vague shrug, a tiny smile.

“Not too bad. Left town to stay with a friend, came back. Got a job, too.” He nods meaningfully, though not without good humour, toward Jim’s notebook.

“Right…Occupation?”

\---

In the other room, Peter slumps forward onto the desk with his face in his hands, and entertains the idea that maybe _now_ he can sneak a cigarette.

If only.

No. No cigarettes, he thinks, remembering the sign out in the waiting area. No smoking. He’ll settle for something else instead. Tea, maybe.

He rises, collects his coat from the back of his chair, then pauses at the sound of voices from next door.

He’d better check on Strange first, hurry him along.

\---

Just next door, Morse and Jim regard each other from their respective chairs.

Questions have been answered. (The mandated ones, anyway), and so they relax into a familiar rhythm.

“Good to hear that you’ve been doing well, matey,” Jim says, shifting in his seat. As an afterthought, “Think you’ll ever…?”

“Come back?” Despite the question, Morse can’t help but be relaxed, open. Honest. It’s a side effect, he supposes, of Jim Strange in general. He smiles and feels a bit sad.

“…No. No, I couldn’t. Not after…” the sentence trails off, and he lets the memory of the last time they’d met do the work for him.

“Right,” comes the reply. “Right.”

There’s no resentment, no animosity, no blame. Only acceptance. 

A rap on the door’s frosted glass from someone outside.

“One minute,” calls Strange, irritation crossing his face. “Jakes,” he explains.

The shape of the DS moves just out of sight beyond the window, probably leaning against the doorframe and wishing for a cigarette.

Let him wish, thinks Morse, aware that he’s currently wasting Jakes’ time, not caring a whit. Let him wait, too.

“Have you done your Sergeant’s yet?” he asks, and notes how Strange seems not to care either, how the other man gives Jakes, outside the door, nothing so much as another glance.

“Soon. Still studying up for it,” Strange replies, and smiles.

“Hmm. I was never very good at that. Studying, I mean.”

The memory hangs there between them, nights at the pub, slow days at the nick, until Morse takes it upon himself to end it.

“You’ll do well, much better than I would’ve.”

“Don’t go selling yourself short…You just needed to _prepare_, was all—”

Another rap at the door, firmer this time, and Morse can’t help it, he just…tenses. 

He’ll have to leave, sooner or later.

But he doesn’t _want _to.

Jim, somehow seeming to sense this train of thought, tilts ever so slightly back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head.

Thoughtfully, conspiratorially, almost, he jerks his head to the door and lowers his voice to a near whisper.

“He’s angry about you, y’know. The leaving. Had a fair bit to say about it the other night.” He frowns, glances down at the desk. “And now he finds you here. Bit of a shock, yeah?”

Morse, in response, snorts. Yeah, he starts to say. Sure.

But he stops, glances, mouth half-open, to Jim, to the door, then back to Jim.

Bit of a shock... Probably not—but it _could _be. if he makes it one.

He’s never actually _tried_ to shock a person in his life. He doubts if the thought’s ever even crossed his mind.

As a policeman, and therefore Jakes’ colleague, it wouldn’t have.

_Now_, though. He’s in opera, not policework.

Putting on a show’s practically in his job description. 

Yes, he thinks. It could work.

He looks to Jim, who raises an eyebrow in a silent question.

How satisfying would it be, just this once, to put on a show, and watch the fallout? Observe Peter Jakes on unfamiliar ground, watch him _stumble_…?

_Very_.

Morse leans back in his own chair, hands stuffed into trouser pockets.

“I’m not a gambling man. But I’ll bet you a pound. That when that door opens, he has to pick his jaw up off the floor.”

\---

Peter’s had it, is about to call for a battering ram, or else for the guvnor when he hears Strange loudly tell whoever he’s been questioning that they can go.

_Finally_.

Personally, he thinks the constable’s at it to be vindictive. But who knows.

He opens the door and starts to move out of the way so the interviewee can exit.

But nobody walks past.

“See you at the pub, then Saturday next?”

Then, “Sure thing, matey.”

_Who—_

He steps through the doorway, into the room, scowling already and—

Oh.

His face goes blank. He feels it.

There’s that familiar figure leaning easily forward to shake Strange’s hand, scribbling out something on a pad of paper and handing it across the desk, turning to look over his shoulder at the door.

“I…” Peter starts, but…can’t seem to get anything out.

See, Morse always was an odd one. Smart, _maybe_, but mostly awkward. Prickly. Easy to rile, and oh, how satisfying to do so.

Morse, in the here and now…is startlingly _present_. Not whirring of mental gears, no fidgeting or ducking his head. He’s _present_, as he turns fully away from Strange, faces the doorway.

And Morse’s moving, now, easily, smoothly. He steps forward and tilts his hip against a chair, stuffs a hand casually in a trouser pocket.

Looks Peter up and down, a quick rake of the eyes, _smirks_, and just stands there, head cocked slightly to the side.

Morse stays still a moment, maintains eye contact as he moves his hand and holds it behind his back.

Jim, suppressing a smile, leans forward to give over the one-pound note, eyes flicking over the scene before him. No need for tea anymore; he’s _wide_ awake.

\---

Down the hallway, Fred Thursday gets up from his seat to poke his head out the door.

Five minutes, he thinks. He’ll give the lads five more minutes to finish things up.

\---

He leans against the chair, hands in pockets.

It’s a fine view, this, Morse thinks to himself, taking care not to let his half-smirk widen into a full-on grin.

'Satisfying' doesn’t even begin to cover the feeling this gives him. Seeing Jakes stand ramrod straight, as though caught mid-stride…

It’s probably a bit like looking in a mirror for the poor sod, he thinks, not letting his eyes drift from Jakes’. Only you’re serious, and someone else smirks back at you from the glass.

Turnabout’s fair play. He lets out a chuckle at the thought.

Best continue.

“Well,” he says lowly, letting genuine amusement color his tone. It hangs in the air like a well-sung note, mingling with the silence until it dissipates between them.

His eyes flicker across the other man’s face once more, cataloguing everything: stillness, surprise, disbelief. Not even a frown.

Good.

Morse smiles, softer now, and murmurs something, almost to himself.

It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s heard.

Either way, he’s done what he meant to.

\---

Nearly a hum, nearly a whisper, and clear as a bell, Peter hears him.

And then Morse turns his head away, tosses an, “I’ll be seeing you, Jim” over his shoulder along with a regular old smile, before slipping past Peter by the doorway and out of the room.

He’s left standing there in the other man’s sudden absence.

“What…” he starts to say, then stops, blinking over at Strange as though coming out of a trance. A frown crosses his face; he feels it arrive but doesn't bother forcing it to leave.

“What’d he say?”

Jim leans back in his chair, glancing out the door.

“Dunno.”

(Peter doesn’t really need the answer. He’d heard it. He remembers. Morse, looking at him, then tossing out that whisper.)

“_So much for ‘absence makes’_._”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you guys think? Let me know by leaving a comment below!  
No comment is too short, no comment is too long; ALL comments are just right!  
Thank you guys for reading.


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